First box, padauk and walnut

So this is my first box ever, completed. Intended as a pen/pencil/etc storage box, even though I don’t need a pen box. Go figure.

WoodI ordered a small quantity of “wood that isn’t pine’ from new lumberjock Rick Koorman, in the form of small blocks of walnut. And he was kind enough to throw in some ‘samples’ of various exotic woods, including padauk. The blocks of walnut are about 1.5×1.5×12”, I guess he uses them for turnings, but I intend to use them for things like this.

The bottom of the box is some bamboo flooring pieces I had laying around, 6mm thick, placed in a rabbet.

DesignIt underwent a few ‘design’ changes. Initially I wanted a sliding lid. Because of space constraints I decided it should have a pull off lid, in a rabbet much like the bottom. But when I cut a stick of padauk in half (by hand) and it had a slight overhang, I thought it looked great, so I went with that and planed off the rabbet, making the box less tall and better balanced.

I then decided it looked top-heavy, and added the feet, which are real tough to glue on straight. I did the bits on the lid last, and figured out how to get them both straight and perfectly spaced, so that the lid presses on (without much force), stays on, but is easily removed.

FinishFor a finish I used ‘wood oil’ which I got with my furniture. In the first two pictures you can see it gives a luscious wet look, which is flattened quite a bit when it has dried. I’ll see how it holds up.

In the close ups you can see the lack of straightness in many pieces, but I’m real happy with the result anyway!

Nice work. I think adding the feet helped make it have better proportions. It would make a great candle box too. How do you like working with padauk? That is some very dense wood, but it does polish extremely well.

Dyno, Padauk is fairly easy to work with, and it looks great. I can really only name two negatives: The bright-red dust, which gets everywhere, and the fact that it’s very course-grained, so it seemed easy to get a bit of tearout if you do anything along the edges.

As a positive side note, walnut and padauk shavings also look very handsome together, if you ever need to fill a winebox with shavings in the fall/winter. :)